1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile communication terminal, a server, a communication system, a communication control method, and a communication control program.
2. Related Background Art
The users of cell phones are now no fewer than seventy millions in Japan, and a great number of users tend to buy a new cell phone every few years. This trend leads to generating a lot of preowned cell phones every year, and it can be said that how such a lot of preowned cell phones should be effectively utilized is a significant issue.
On the other hand, inexpensive RFIDs (Radio Frequency Identifications), which transmit information containing their own identification number at regular intervals, are commonly known, and there are also proposals on technologies and others of using such RFIDs to track links among spread goods, delivery vehicles, and warehouses in real time, thereby enabling estimation of delivery time of goods, searching for missing goods, promotion of efficiency in shipment and storage, and logistics such as joint shipment (reference should be made to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-328713).
Under the circumstances as described above, it is conceivable to provide the cell phones with an RFID information receiving function of receiving signals from RFIDs, and simply providing the cell phones with the RFID information receiving function can cause the problem as described below. Namely, if the RFID information receiving function is activated before the cell phones are handled as preowned cell phones (during a period in which each cell phone is used as a mobile terminal for cellular communication), reception transactions at intervals of predetermined time will consume a massive amount of power. On the other hand, if the function as a mobile terminal for cellular communication is activated after the cell phones are handled as preowned cell phones, it will result in increasing the traffic too much in cellular communication networks. It is also expected that some users have a demand to desire to make available both the function as a mobile terminal for cellular communication and the RFID information receiving function, even with some increase in charge.
For these reasons, it is strongly desired to develop a technology of avoiding excessive power consumption and traffic by appropriate switching among a state in which only the function as a mobile terminal for cellular communication is active (a cell-phone transmit/receive mode), a state in which only the RFID information receiving function is active (an RFID information receive mode), a state in which the both functions are active (a dual mode), and so on. From a user's point of view, there are hopes for setting charging rates as low as possible for user's payment, with restrictions on use.
The present invention has been accomplished in order to solve the above problem and an object of the invention is to provide a mobile communication terminal, a server, a communication system, a communication control method, and a communication control program enabling appropriate switching among a plurality of modes as described above.